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Harry Potemkin WIP

(Hanging with my girl on the couch tonight so here’s a bit of WIP from the Harry Potemkin project at Farrago’s)

The first labyrinth was built by Father and Son on an unfinished island that lay near the rim of the sea. The island, still rudely volcanic, was suited to such a construct with its numerous quarries of heavy rock. It was an iron-rich stone, one that darkened quickly under the hot summer sun as it was exposed by the pick and the shovel.

The center of the maze, a series of inter-rotating concentric locks, was constructed first. One morning, while they raised cylinders and fitted tumblers, Son asked Father why they were digging a hole in the stony surface of the island. “To better hide our sins,” Father told him.

As the years passed, and the chaotic splendor of the walls grew around the rings in the center, Son asked Father why they wanted to hide their sins. “So that others may not find them,” Father said.

And, when the labyrinth was finished, Father bound Son and placed him within the last span of wall. As Father was laying mortar and stone, Son asked why he was being left behind. “So that you may warn the others,” Father said.

Father could not tell his only child the true reason they had built the labyrinth. The night before they had started digging, he had dreamed that Son would one day grow curious about the world beyond the island and seek to fly. In his dream, Father watched his innocent flesh be burned by the sun and drowned by the waves, and he could not survive the heartbreak of such a loss.